The exception may, however, prove to be the rule. In 2002, Andrei Konchalovsky's film House of Fools was released. It is undoubtedly the most important cinematic statement on the Chechen war, and is one of the most significant films of the whole post-Soviet period. Based on actual events in 1996, it is set in a lunatic asylum in Chechnya in the midst of war, and in the course of the film the asylum is overrun by both Chechen and Russian troops. This gives the viewer an opportunity to compare the behaviour of the two sets of soldiers. The heroine, Janna Timofeyeva, fantasises that she is in love with the Canadian rock star Bryan Adams (who makes several appearances in her dreams/fantasies), and her visions of peace and harmony are starkly juxtaposed with the unfeeling callousness of the real world.

The relative order of the asylum is interrupted by the arrival of Chechen soldiers, but these are not the ruthless, sadistic bandits we have come to expect from previous films, but rather are respectful, cultured, deeply religious men with an obvious sense of grievance: no rapes, no torture, no beheadings here. The real madness of the outside world intervenes with the arrival of the Russian troops pursuing them, their commanding officer (Yevgeny Mironov) continuously on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Russian troops firing at each other in the panic and uncertainty of combat.

Konchalovsky's film is a remake of Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), updated and transferred to strife-torn modern Russia, where the inmates of an asylum represent more order and sanity than the world that reigns outside their walls. Russian troops sell back to the Chechens corpses of their fallen comrades ($2,000 per cadaver), and Chechens sell Russian soldiers dope. A superbly jarring effect is achieved when Janna sits in the ground of the asylum playing her accordion, as a Russian helicopter in slow motion crashes to the earth behind her, an incongruously beautiful juxtaposition of images of war and peace. There is a moment of sad irony when a Russian and a Chechen commander simultaneously realise that they had fought on the same side in Afghanistan years earlier. Ahmed, the last remaining Chechen soldier and Janna's intended groom, is by the end of the film himself unhinged and becomes one of the inmates.

Konchalovsky's film is evidently at odds with the prevailing post-1999 mood of confrontation and engagement with a demonised enemy, but, like Forman's film, it encourages us to see the world from the point of view of its victims: those who have no power and whose words and protestations go unheard. War is madness, and only the lunatics seem to know any semblance of order, routine and normality.